


What You Have is Faith, Baby

by srmiller



Category: Arrow (TV 2012)
Genre: olcity
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2014-06-21
Updated: 2014-06-21
Packaged: 2018-02-05 14:15:43
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 3,321
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/1821430
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/srmiller/pseuds/srmiller
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Arrow UA inspired by the Bones episode "Aliens in Spaceship" in which Sara and Felicity are buried in a car alive while Oliver and Team Arrow try to find them before they run out of air</p>
            </blockquote>





	What You Have is Faith, Baby

Felicity woke up in the dark with a pain in her neck and a pounding headache.

She was in her car, she recognized the familiar seat of her Mini Cooper, though the seat was pushed back further than she usually kept it, but it was impossibly dark. Shouldn’t it still be light outside?

“Felicity?”

The voice came from the back seat, familiar even in the dark, “Sara?”

“Are you okay?”

“I…I think so?” she fumbled on the dash for the light and flicked on the overhead light before twisting in her seat so she could Sara stretched out behind the passenger seat, her leg covered in blood.

Why were vigilantes always bleeding in the back of her car?

“Are _you_ okay?” Felicity asked, eyeing the wound suspiciously. After two years of sewing up Digg and Oliver she was by no means an expert, but the wound-a jagged and torn up mess-looked like it was on the bad end of the spectrum.

“I’m fine for now,” Sara assured her, but the other blonde’s grimace when she adjusted herself on the seat told Felicity she was anything but okay.

“What happened? I remember leaving the lair and heading to my car,” she screwed her face as she tried to bring back those last few moments which were now hazy with fog, “I remember unlocking it but after that…I don’t remember anything after that.”

“We were tased,” Sara filled in. “Well, you were tased, I was hit by a car.”

Tased and hit by a car meant Bad Guy, and with Sara injured that meant she and Felicity needed the boys, “Have you called Oliver?”

Sara shook her head, “He took the battery out of our phones.”

“Who?”

With a heavy sigh Sara met Felicity’s eyes from across the small space, “The Grave Digger.”

\-------------------

“We should have heard from them hours ago,” Oliver repeated as he once against tried to call Felicity with no results. As it had the last ten times he’d called it went straight voicemail, only this time an automated voice told him the voicemail he was trying to reach was full and to try again another time.

“Have you tried their trackers?”

“The signal’s too weak,” Oliver told Digg as he scrolled through his contacts to try Sara’s phone again, only to be interrupted by an incoming call from a blocked number. Worried it might be Felicity or Sara he answered and as soon as he heard the mechanically altered voice he put it on speaker, desperate eyes meeting Digg’s in the bright light of his Queen Consolidated office.

“Sara Lance and Felicity Smoak have been buried alive. Wire transfer eight million dollars to the following Grand Cayman account or they will suffocate to death.”

\------------------- 

Determined to prove Sara wrong Felicity had tried to open the driver’s side door but no matter how hard she pulled on the handle or pushed against the door it didn’t budge and with something akin to desperation she turned on the car, the radio crackling with static intermixed with music, and tried to roll down the window only to be showered by rocks and dirt.

“Roll it back up,” Sara ordered, sitting up to make sure Felicity did as told.

“Oh my God,” Felicity murmured, her voice raising with each word. “Oh my God.”

“We’re going to be fine,” Sara assured her, though she was pretty certain they were going to be anything but. “What do we have to work with? Talk to me Felicity.”

“Uh,” Felicity dumped out her purse on the passenger seat and gave Sara an inventory, “I have a water bottle, my cell phone with no battery, same with my tablet. A couple of protein bars, and a copy of the latest dystopian novel.”

“I’ve got a water bottle too, a knife I keep in the lining of my bag, and uh, a flask of jack.”

Felicity raised her eyebrows, amused despite the situation, “Well, we can play Never Have I Ever if we get bored.”

“Actually, I think we’re going to need it for something else.”

At Felicity’s questioning look Sara gestured to her leg, “I’m worried it’s compartment syndrome.”

She thought the cut had looked worse the usual ones she saw, “Is it fatal? I mean within the next couple of hours?”

“No, but it’s going to be painful. Really, really painful. Slip to shock and die painful. I’m going to need your help.”

“You’re going to want me to do something gross, aren’t you?”

“I’m going to need you to save my life.”

 -------------------

“You’re saying he has my daughter?” Quentin Lance demanded to the familiar disguised voice in his ear. When he’d picked up the call from the vigilante he’d expected any number of things, finding out his daughter and Felicity had been kidnapped by the very serial killer he was trying to catch was not one of them.

“I’m sorry Detective.”

“How did this happen?” he demanded.

Back at QC Oliver glanced at Digg and Roy, who had arrived minutes after he’d been made aware of the situation, “He got them in a parking lot in the Glades. There were security cameras,” closed circuit and impossible to get without the password, as per Felicity’s insistence. She may very well have saved herself. “We can’t see who did it but we’re tracking Felicity’s car as well as the tracker she keeps on her. We’ll find your daughter Detective.”

“You think you can do it? You really think you can save Sara?”

Oliver glanced at the fear and worry on his friends’ faces but steeled himself against the doubt, “Yes, I do.”

\------------------- 

“Oliver’s going to find us,” Felicity insisted as she used Sara’s shirt to bind the now bleeding wound. She’d had to use Sara’s knife to cut in to the leg, releasing the pressure on the wound and though Sara had insisted she wouldn’t need it, she’d bit down on her leather coat until the worst of the pain had passed.

In all honesty, Felicity had expected her to pass out.

“We’re underground Felicity.”

Felicity shook her head, dismissing Sara’s negativity, “He’ll find us.”

“How?”

“There are security cameras in the parking lot, he’ll pull up the footage and track my car to…to wherever we are.”

“The Grave Digger’s consistent,” Sara felt the need to remind her friend. “We only had twelve hours of air, and we’ve been down here at least four hours already.”

“So we have eight hours for Oliver to find us. Want to take turns reading the book out loud until then?’

Sara shook her head with a laugh, “I don’t know how you do it.”

“Do what?”

“Remain so optimistic, given what we do.”

Felicity tilted her head, her ponytail falling across her shoulder as she did, “How can I _not_ be optimistic, given what we do? We save people Sara, it’s what we do. And when it’s one of our own? Oliver’s not going to give up, he’s going to find us.”

“How?”

Felicity grinned and nearly bounced in her seat as she leaned forward, “I have an idea.”

\-------------------

Oliver paced the length of the lair, they were running out of time and after a few turns the city’s security cameras had lost sight of Felicity’s car, lost sight of Felicity and he had no idea what to do next.

If he’d still had complete control of QC he’d have paid the ransom without a second thought, but as it was the board, which held the vast amounts of Queen money in its fist, wouldn’t pay the ransom for an employee without proof of life.

And the Grave Digger wasn’t going to provide it. One call and one call only, it was the way he’d operated for years.

He could feel Roy and Digg watching him, waiting for him to tell them what to do next but he didn’t know, could barely work past the panic and the fear to think properly _._ The trackers wouldn’t work from this distance while they were buried, he’d have to get within a hundred yards to be able to pinpoint their signal.

He had to know where they were in order to find them.

With a heavy heart he glanced at the computer screen which blinked down the seconds till Sara and Felicity ran out of air, till he lost them.

When his phone beeped from his pocket he assumed it was Detective Lance with an update from his end of the investigation but when he picked up the phone and saw Felicity’s face staring at him his heart stopped.

“Is it them?” Roy demanded, stepping forward to look over Oliver’s shoulder as he swiped across the screen to read the message she had, God knows how, managed to send.

Digg moved to stand beside them and was able to read the two word message Felicity and Sara had sent, two words which just might save their lives.

_Track me._

\-------------------

“Do you think it went through?” Sara asked after the cellphone fizzled and popped in her hand with electricity, effectively rendering it useless after they had rigged it to the horn to be able to send a single solitary message to the outside.

“Yeah, I think it went through. They’re going to find us.”

Sara smiled, “Your optimism is going to give me a sunburn. But if you’re going to insist on trying to save our lives, than I’ve got an idea that will either help us or kill us.”

Felicity narrowed her eyes from the driver’s seat where her legs were curled beneath her, “That’s terrifying.”

“We only have a little over an hour left, and even if Oliver does manage to track the text message to a location he’s not going to be able to find us underground. We need to get out of here, or at the very least show them where we are.”

“Agreed.”

Sara nodded towards the steering wheel, “Air bags deploy using an explosive, if we take it out and use the windshield to shape the charge the explosion should be enough to get us out.”

“Okay, what’s the ‘might kill us’ part?”

“It’ll only work if we’re less than four feet underground, anymore and the explosion will blow back and the concussions will turn our brains to jelly.”

“Oh good, then we can run for congress.”

Sara laughed, but sobered quickly because she knew the risks, she’d died too many times for this to truly terrify her, so it would have to be Felicity’s choice, “What do you think?”

“We don’t know where we are, what kind of terrain they’re going to have work with trying to find us, or how well the Grave Digger hid us. The tracker will give them a few blocks to work with, but it won’t tell him exactly where we are.”

Sara didn’t push as Felicity looked around the darkness, her fingers twisting and pulling at each other as she thought through the possibilities, “We’re going to have to meet Oliver half way.”

“Okay, but first will you hand me the book?”

“Now you want to read?” Felicity asked, incredulous.

“No, I want to write a letter. To my dad, to Laurel,” she’d died too many times without the chance to say goodbye to those she loved, she wasn’t going to waste an opportunity to say ‘I love you’ one last time. “Just in case.”

She tore out a piece of paper and handed to Felicity, “Anyone you want to say goodbye to?”

With a hesitant hand Felicity took the piece of paper, and grabbed one of the pens from her bag as Sara did the same in the back seat but when she went to put ink to the page she could only stare at the blank space, willing the words to come because if they were the last she ever got to say to Oliver they needed to be the right ones.

Collecting her courage she wrote down his name, and after that the words tumbled out so quickly she could barely manage to make them legible-words she’d held back, or ignored, big words she wished she should have said out loud, and words she’d said before but needed to make sure she said one last time.

After a few minutes of quiet writing, the seconds ticking down to less than an hour of air left, Sara folded up her piece of paper and tucked it in the pocket of her jeans. Shortly after Felicity folded hers and slipped it into the band of her bra since her dress didn’t have any pockets.

“We need to be as far from the explosion as possible,” Sara told Felicity, holding out a hand.

With grim determination Felicity accepted it and climbed in to the back seat with Sara, fingers linked and holding tight as Sara raised the detonator, “Ready?”

Felicity nodded and when Sara squeezed her hand, she returned the sentiment.

“It’s been a privilege,” Sara murmured.

Fighting back tears Felicity let go of Sara’s hand to wrap the other woman in a hug and for a moment they just held on.

“Okay,” Sara pulled back, wiping away a single tear she hadn’t managed to keep in check. “Here’s to hoping Ollie saves the day one last time.”

Felicity nodded, taking Sara’s free hand once again, “Here’s to hoping.”

When Sara pushed the button Felicity held her breath, and prayed it wouldn’t be her last.

\------------------- 

Oliver had pulled up to abandoned quarry the same time as SWAT and what looked like a good chunk of the SCPD.

Lance had called Oliver Queen when he’d heard from the Arrow about the kidnapping, and again when the Arrow had called with the location of the missing girls.

“Look for any discrepancies on the ground!” Lance yelled to be heard over the trucks and voices of the fifty or so officers at the scene. Oliver barely paid him any attention, already looking for bumps or drops in the topography or—

He wasn’t sure how he’d seen it, but out the corner of his eye he’d caught the small burst of air pushing the through the gravel and dirt off to his right, barely making a noise and without a word to Lance, or Digg and Roy who were there with him, he started off at a run, pulling off his suit jacket as his hundred dollar shoes pushed through the dirt.

They were there, he thought desperately as he began to dig through the dirt, barely noticing his partners joining him. They were alive.

He buried in his arms almost to his elbow, searching the space until he touched an arm and grabbing it he started to pull, working against the dirt and gravity to free the woman he now knew was Felicity was from the ground.

In his peripheral he saw Roy and Digg pulling Sara out as Lance finally caught up with them and in his arms Felicity, free from the hole which had almost been her grave, clung to him.

Alive.

\-------------------

On a Sunny day at the end of May Oliver Queen wore a black tuxedo and waited on the back lawn of the Queen Mansion for his future wife.

Surrounded by only a handful of people he and Felicity loved and trusted Oliver waited with barely contained patience for the procession to start, ignoring Roy’s sniggers as Digg, who would officiate the ceremony, scolded him.

When he saw Thea it surprised him how little she looked like the young girl from his memory, and the smile she shared with Roy gave him pause that maybe this wouldn't be the only Queen wedding this year-but it was Felicity he was looking for, Felicity who he’d been waiting for.

And when she came down the steps and walked towards him he was fairly certain he could never be happier in his entire life than he was in that moment, and more than anything he was looking forward to being proven wrong again and again as they made their life together.

As Digg began the ceremony Oliver reached out, unable to stop from touching her, to remind himself this was real and this happiness was his to keep.

And when it came time to say their vows Felicity went first.

“Two years ago I was buried alive and it was one of the most terrifying experiences I’ve ever lived through. And while Sara and I were down there I kept telling her you were coming, you’d find us. She called me an optimist but really, I just had faith. I believed in you without hesitation, just like I’ve done every day since we met, but there was a moment when we weren’t sure if you’d find us in time, so Sara tore out a page from a book to write a letter to her dad and to her sister. Then tore out another and handed it to me, asking me if there was anyone I wanted to say goodbye to. As it turned out, there was.”

Felicity handed Thea her bouquet and accepted a very worn, very dirty piece of paper and carefully unfolded it, “Oliver. If you’re reading this then you did it, you found me.”

She stopped and took a breath, meeting Oliver’s tear filled eyes with her own, “I can’t cry. I’m wearing contacts.”

He smiled, a watery laugh escaping his lips as he reached out to wipe an errant tear in the corner of her eyes.

“I’m sorry the timing was so bad,” she read with a shaky voice. “Though it does seem to be the story of our lives doesn’t it? Bad timing, dangerous people, and terrible circumstances. I want you to remember this wasn’t your fault, whatever happened isn’t yours to carry. I died fighting to get out, to get back to my life. To get back to you.”

Felicity took a deep breath, fighting those heavy tears she could taste in the back of her throat, and with knowledge that came from years of loving each other, Oliver squeezed her hand to give her strength to go on.

“So if you take away anything from this tragedy, take away that. Take away the knowledge I was fighting to get back to you, to the life we could have had, and the life I’m hoping we might still have. I hope I’m reading this to you one day, and we can both look back and think how foolish we were to wait so long.”

Felicity cleared her throat, staring at the words she’d scrawled in the near dark so many years ago because she knew if she looked at Oliver any semblance of control she had would be lost, “But I wouldn’t trade a minute of it, not one, because standing with you, being your partner and your friend-you are a hero Oliver, and the time I spent with you was the best I ever had.

“Tell Roy to be strong,” she smiled and met Roy’s eyes which were as misty as everyone else’s in attendance. “To be brave, and to trust himself. Tell Digg he will always be the strongest person I knew and I’m the better for having known him. And whenever you’re lost, whenever you find yourself giving up, or giving in, remind yourself I believed in you,” and unable to keep her eyes away Felicity met Oliver’s and all the love shared seemed to shimmer in the space between them, “But more importantly that I loved you. With everything I had. Yours always, Felicity.”

It wasn’t the right time, there were still things to be said and promises to be made, but Oliver didn’t care about any of that as he leaned forward and pressed his lips against Felicity’s, a warm and calming kiss filled with all the steadiness and tranquility they managed to give to each other.

Filled with all the days to come, and the life they’d share together.


End file.
